(2008) 5 1/2" x 10 1/2" Pencil on Paper. Processed and framed in Photoshop.

This is the one card where I am a little guilty of sacrificing traditional meaning to my own personal whim, but seeing how gorgeous vile old Umbridge turned out I cannot say that I am overly sorry. Basically I made a joke at the expense of good old Aleister Crowley, and I apologize!

His Thot Tarot has the old Egyptian goddess Maat as the personification for Justice. Maat was present at the judgment of souls in the afterlife where she put a feather on the scales when the dead person's heart was examined. If the heart was heavier than her feather - i.e. the deceased had unbalanced justice by his misdeeds, his heart was fed to the crocodile god Sobek and that was the end of that. If the feather was heavier than the person's heart, Osiris would welcome them to all the pleasures of the afterlife.

So the feather became the attribute of Justice in Crowley's deck. Well, Umbridge is meting out her own warped justice with her sadistic feather detention treatment, and so she made the cut for Justice, standing before the great Ministry seal that warns offenders that ignorance does not excuse any wrongdoing.

Of course in a traditional deck Justice has a much more positive meaning, exhorting one to be fair, to balance things out, but also to warn that one should not amass bad karma, because what we send out to others has an unpleasant way of returning to us. Then again, maybe Umbridge can serve as a bad example...